Month: July 2005
Edge Cases
One of the considerations with the location of a house is which school district it is in. In some states, determining the school district is easy: it’s co...
Guns, Germs, and Steel
National Geographic has an excellent documentary based on Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel now playing on PBS. I suggest telling the TiVo to catch i...
I’m Suffering from Externalities!
I spent the majority of today installing an enterprise-class document management system’s client. Now, I get a request to file my request for x electronic...
A Monopolistic Lack of Quality
Can you imagine a world where the supply does not respond to the demand? I can. It’s called in-house software.
The Buddhist Discovery of Fusang
John Lienhard, in his essay Fusang, talks about the Chinese discovery of the Americas. The Chinese were very isolationist, 1500 years ago. China thought the out...
Nature v. Nuture
Is procrastination a learned behavior, or genetic?
Homes Passed Over
I have to wonder in what world industry analysts live. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article on broadband prices’ dropping to dial-up levels discusses th...
Legislation Repugnant to the Constitution
Via Ernie the Attorney we find that the Congresscritters have the mistaken impression that they are there to do something. In the instant case, it’s H. R....
You Are My Density
Joe Gregorio‘s post, A World Made of (Well-Designed) Cities, points to two interesting pieces: Tim O’Reilly’s reprint of a Stewart Brand lectu...
A Practical Use for Podcasting
I’ve come up with what I hope is a practical application of podcasting: love notes. Secretly download the new version of iTunes and subscribe to the love ...
Caching Podcasts
Via Eric Hancock, I learn that Apple appears to be caching podcasts. This is a damn fine idea. Eric wonders, It should be relatively easy for Apple to allow pub...